Flickering Hourglass - Help!

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support,microsoft.public.windowsxp.video (More info?)

Steve Walker wrote:
> Colleagues at work are recently experiencing a flickering effect on
> the windows hourglass whilst accessing a networked Oracle database.
> Although it's a tiny animation, it seems to catch their eye and
> causes great annoyance.
>
> Desktops are newish 256MB P4's, corporate HP-type stuff with o/b
> graphics. Network is also new (100/1000mb capacity) with high-spec
> switches etc. Server is also a beefy newish model, located approx 50
> miles away (linked over private WAN, high-speed optical backbone).
> Overall loading isn't high, it's been built with future capacity for
> VOIP etc.
> Flickering coincides with the delay in obtaining each screen update,
> so I'm guessing it's signalling a network lag (ranges from 5secs to
> >1min per change). We might not be able to make the network any
> faster, so I'm wondering if it's possible to disable the flicker
> animation and just have the static hourglass? That would be
> achievable within the XP (some W2K) registry, wouldn't it...?
> please....?
> Any suggestions really appreciated, these are decent hard-working
> folks and it's driving them mad on a daily basis!

They can (always have been able to) do this themselves...

Control Panel --> Mouse --> Pointers tab..
Change the appropriate pointer animation to something static to see if that
actually helps.

--
>=- Shenan -=<
>=- MS MVP -=<
--
The information above is intended to assist you; however, it is
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Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support,microsoft.public.windowsxp.video (More info?)

Shenan Stanley wrote:
> Steve Walker wrote:
>> Colleagues at work are recently experiencing a flickering effect
>> on the windows hourglass
>
> They can (always have been able to) do this themselves...
>
> Control Panel --> Mouse --> Pointers tab..
> Change the appropriate pointer animation to something static to
> see if that actually helps.

Thanks Shenan, for such a quick reply!

AFAIK, they're all using standard Windows Default pointers (corporate cloned
OS). This doesn't appear to have any intentional animation features, at
least it doesn't here on my XP pro desktop at home. I have already tried
changing one user to Standard Large and also to Inverted, but the flicker
behaviour persisted when loading data from the network. Also tried changes
to pointer precision & speed, no success.

Googling suggests this symptom is associated with system overload, and this
can be evidenced to some extent within the application. Lots of the
documents are templated Word files, and they take some processing to load.
I could believe that during flicker, the cpu is running flat out (but
haven't checked that yet).